An Ancient Warming Event May Have Lasted Longer Than We Thought

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By Rebecca Owen, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Fifty-six million years ago, during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), global temperatures rose by more than 5°C over 100,000 or more years. Between 3,000 and 20,000 petagrams of carbon were released into the atmosphere during this time, severely disrupting ecosystems and ocean life globally and creating a prolonged hothouse state. Modern anthropogenic global warming is also expected to upend Earth’s carbon cycle for thousands of years. Between 1850 and 2019, approximately 2,390 petagrams of carbon dioxide (CO2) were released into the atmosphere, and the release of another 5,000 petagrams in the coming centuries is possible with continued fossil fuel consumption. However, estimates of how long the disruption will last range widely, from about 3,000 to 165,000 years. Understanding how long the carbon cycle was disrupted during the PETM could offer researchers insights into how severe and how long-lasting disruptions stemming from anthropogenic climate change may be. Previous research used carbon isotope records to estimate that the PETM lasted 120,000–230,000 years. Piedrahita et al. now suggest that the warming event lasted almost 269,000 years.... 

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